The Jewish holidays are here, and that means a lot of work!  I’ll be out of town until after Rosh ha-Shanna and Yom Kippur.  Please check back after Yom Kippur for more updates, videos, and articles.

Wishing everyone a sweet new year -

Avi Bloomenstiel

As I mentioned a while back in this post, Sifrei Torah written upon mashuach (coated) parchment can be rather painful to repair and maintain.

Log, whitewash, flaking off the back of a parchment sheet

Before beginning the CTC Sefer Torah, I had been contracted by a synagogue in Austin to restore/repair an antique Sefer Torah from Algiers and to have it ready in time for Rosh ha-Shanna…

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I’m back  to business again and back to my regular writing schedule of 21 to 30 lines per day.  Today I finished a good chunk of Parshas Noach.   Hopefully I will have it finished before Rosh ha-Shanna and then be well on my way to Lech-Lecha, the next section of the Torah according to the traditional division and cycle of readings.

Today's Writing... Note that the tagim, "Crowns" have not yet been put on these letters

By this point I have gotten the feel of the klaf (parchment) enough to notice that the writing was coming out exceptionally even  and well spaced.  Knowing my own writing all too well, and knowing that I didn’t trim the quill between the last section and the current one, I  suspected that something must be different with this yeria (sheet of parchment).

The Entire Section

I took out my calipers and measured the height and width of the lines, finding their measurements yielded a ratio of almost exactly 17:155 – a “golden ratio” of sorts for figuring the height/width of lines in a Torah or Megilla scroll.   For reasons that will be explained in an upcoming post, this ratio tends to generate the most evenly spaced script, fewest numbers of stretched letters, and all with the lease crowded appearance.  This ratio of this particular yeria differs from the other yerios by a mere hairs breadth, yet to the hand of a sofer, that minute discrepancy makes an amazing amount of difference.

Check in Wednesday for more videos – This time we tackle the letter gimel!

Apologies for the long delay in getting back to my posting schedule – between a brief vacation and some fits and starts, everything is back on track once again.

Well, as we have mentioned previously, there are about 62 parchment sheets in modern Torah scrolls.   The method of attaching all of these sheets together to form a complete scroll is a halacha le-Moshe mi-Sinai, a law communicated orally by G-d to Moses that is usually only alluded to, yet not stated explicitly, in the Tanakh, the Jewish scriptures…

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After a small amount of computer wrangling, here is part 3 of the video on Beis, the second letter of the Hebrew Alphabet.  Please see below for the first two videos.  Thanks!